MAMMALS. 



29 



the Common Seals as quite abundant on the coast, and, while he had seen many, his 

 brother, who had been presented with a beautiful single-barrelled gim made by 

 Dickson of Edinburgh, shot one on the rocks. 



The Rev. J. W. Taylor, in his Historical Antiquities of Fife^ Chiefly Ecclesiastical 

 (n.d.), says in his introduction, and on the authority of the previous minister of Flisk, 

 the Rev. Dr. Fleming : " Numbers of Seals sunning on the sand-banks," and " Por- 

 poises tumbling up the river as far as Flisk Manse, but now (date not given) not a 

 Seal or a Porpoise is visible in the whole Firth of Tay" ; and he assigns as a reason for 

 their disappearance at the time he -wTote "the frequent steamers and the fleets of 

 ships which every tide brings in and carries out from Dundee" {op. cit, p. 6). (The 

 approximate date of these remarks is the early third of last century.) As far up as Inver- 

 gowrie Bay there is a sand and mud bank which was named the "Dog-bank" from 

 the numbers of Seals which frequented it. A very cruel method of capturing Seals is 

 described as prosecuted by one of the name of Melville in the Trans, of the Perthshire 

 Society (vol. ii. p. 80), viz. by sticking upturned hooks of iron in the rocks frequented 

 by the animals. In this way an occasional one was impaled and secured. 



Of the Common Seal occurring in fresh water — of which we have given instances 

 in a previous volume of this series {Argyll, pp. 20-21 and p. 24), and of which I have 

 since heard of other occurrences at Loch Morar, Argyll, where the animal must have 

 traversed dry land in order to get there — they are known to ascend the Tay beyond 

 Perth at least, and the tale is told of a " Grey Seal " having ventured even up the 

 river Earn. It was seen resting on a shoal on the river (I think I can picture the spot 

 in my mind's eye) by a Mr. AVilliam Robertson when fishing for salmon. ^Mr, 

 Robertson hooked a fish and the Seal at once plunged into the river, and it was with 

 some difficulty he managed to secure the salmon. It is not said that the Seal jiursued 

 or laid hold of the salmon, but that such a thing has taken place before I think we 

 gave evidence in our Argyll volume {loc. cit.). "Mr. Robertson then procured a 

 gun at a farm-house and shot the poor beast." So runs the story in the Fishing 

 Gazette of November 3, 1894. No doubt this was a P. vitulina in one of the many 

 pelages which Millais has so recently illustrated. 



Phoca groenlandica, Fah. Harp Seal. 



One specimen of this Seal is on record. It was shot by Mr. Kennedy 

 in Invergowrie Bay, Carse of Gowrie, on September 6, 1895, and 

 was seen by Mr. Millais. It was an adult female {Annals Scot. Nat 

 Hist., 1902, p. 182). It is mentioned again in the Bejw/i of the 

 Curator of the Perth Museum (vol. ii. p. 102). 



Cystophora cristata (Erxl). Hooded Seal. 



Mr. Robert Walker gives the only authentic record of the occurrence 

 of the Hooded Seal, and describes it in an elaborate article — like 

 most of that author's papers — in the Scot. Nat. (vol. ii. pp. 1-5). It 

 was a young male, and was caught when reposing near low-water 

 mark on one of the ledges of the undercliflf at St. Andrews. Mr. 



